The Return (The Witch Hunter Saga)

by Nicole R. Taylor

"Pretty gutsy, Alex. Staking a founding vampire," Sam whistled. "How's Gabby? Do you need me to come over?"

  "She's pretty shaken. I'm taking her to my place for now. As far as I know, Arturius doesn't know where I live, so she should be safe for the time being. You can come over if you want, but he can't get in."

  "I'll come as soon as I can," he promised. "I just have to check up on Zac."

  "I understand."

  "Please keep this from him for now," Sam continued. "It would be bad for us all if he found out. He'd go kamikaze on us and we've only just got him back on track."

  "Right, okay," Alex said, uncomfortably. "We're leaving now."

  As he hung up, Gabby was standing there looking up at him with wide, fearful eyes. Now, more than ever, he wished Aya was still alive. She would know what to do. Remembering what she had told him when she and Sam had rescued him from that first vampire, he sniffed. You're the first human who has liked me for who I was and not what I was. God, he wished she were here.

  He didn't have any hope helping them defeat Katrin, he was only a regular human being. No supernatural powers or immortality. But with this, at least he could do something. Even if it was only offering a place where vampires couldn't enter. A temporary safe house.

  "C'mon," he said, placing an arm around her shoulders. "Let's get you home."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The next evening they all assembled at the manor, determined to work out a plan to thwart Arturius. The constant bullshit was wearing Zac down. The sooner he was gone, the better. Without an immediate threat, perhaps they could search for a way to end him for good and who knew how long that would take. But he knew he wouldn't rest until he had avenged Aya's death. It had taken a tragedy for him to find a purpose and wasn't that just a kick in the guts?

  "What about Morgan?" Sam asked him. "Is she coming?"

  "This is not for her," Zac frowned. "She's a good person, but this is our problem. Besides, I don't think Aya would have wanted her secrets handed out to just anyone."

  "She spent thousands of years doing whatever it took to keep them," Gabby said.

  "Exactly. So far, she's just hanging around town, trying to figure out her next move. She has to choose herself if she wants to stay and help us, but I won't have her knowing everything."

  From the look in Sam's eyes he knew his brother thought that was a good idea. The more people that knew, the more danger everyone was in. Aya's past was a secret for a reason. Whatever that reason was, she had killed for it. That was enough for him to keep Morgan out of it.

  "There has to be a way," Liz was saying. "Nothing can live forever. We can die, so can he."

  "Short of severing his head from his shoulders and encasing him in concrete, I wouldn't have a clue," Zac said sarcastically.

  "Then why don't you do that?" Gabby asked.

  Zac shook his head, "There's always the chance someone could chisel him out, isn't there?"

  "What about the dreams?" Sam asked.

  "What about them? They don't reveal anything we don't already know," Zac sighed, not wanting to discuss it.

  "What dreams?" Liz sat up, confused. No one paid her question any attention.

  "I've been doing a little research on them," Alex said, sitting forward.

  "You told Alex?" Zac groaned.

  "I told Alex because his sister might be able to help," Sam said, an unmistakable note of warning in his voice. "She's studying in Oxford and has access to a lot of stuff."

  "They're not even real," he said, disregarding the notion.

  "There's no way of knowing what is and what isn't," Sam said. "Any information is worth it when we have nothing else to go on."

  "I only told Isobel the bare minimum," Alex interjected. "I said a friend here was studying some ancient myths for a thesis and asked if she could find some references."

  "Did she find anything?" asked Sam, eagerly.

  "Well, something in one of the dreams kind of stuck with me," Alex said quietly, as if he was wary of his friends reactions. "I asked her if she knew anything about the vampire myth and the origins of witchcraft."

  "Get to the point," Zac rolled his eyes.

  "Geesus!" Alex glared at him and continued. "She's been studying the history of the Britons, otherwise known as the Celts, and from what I understand myths and legends that were around about the time Aya was turned and the Founders we created. There was a story about a deity who was thought to be fae."

  Zac snorted, "A fairy?"

  "Not exactly," Gabby interjected. "More like an elemental spirit."

  "The story was a reference to a deity called Aericura, one of the names you said Arturius gave Aya," continued Alex, referring to the email on his cell, "who apparently is still worshipped today. Basically, it says Aericura was taken from the forest by some deities from the underworld and corrupted. The thing that is strange about this is that the deities are described as something very similar to a vampire. Then the same reference appeared in a medieval manuscript in 605AD. Aericura, the raven-haired star, her purity taken by the blood of devils. Isobel said both were vague references, which is why it interested her as nothing else was really recorded other than the modern representation."

  "What's the modern version?" asked Sam, his brow furrowed.

  "She was worshipped as a goddess of blossoming, fertility... She was also believed to be a guardian in battle," Gabby said a little uncomfortably, shifting on either foot. "Vague at best."

  Zac narrowed his eyes at Gabby. She was holding something back, "I seriously doubt that the answers we're looking for are the kind that were written down."

  "I agree with Zac," said Sam, "If the founding vampires or witches found their secrets written down for anyone to read, they'd stop at nothing to destroy any trace of it. Vague is exactly what we're looking for."

  "There's a bunch of other goddesses worshipped around that time that are related," Alex has been googling on his phone, "Aerten, Agrona... All goddesses related to war and the heavens. There's an Irish goddess that sounds like her. The Morrigan. Known as the Phantom Queen, reigning over war and strife, she appears as a crow or wolf."

  "Sounds like Aya," Zac said, agreeing.

  "You think these were all identities she took at one time or another?" Sam asked, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

  "That's what Isobel seemed to think. They all sounded like the same person and it's what she's researching for her thesis. She didn't exactly say why she though it, but. I haven't had a chance to call her back. I assume she was trying to find proof."

  Silence fell on the room then, as they all thought this over. It would be folly to think that Aya hadn't of meddled in people's lives in different guises as she went about avenging her families memory. The length of time she'd walked the earth was unfathomable to Zac. In terms of vampirism, he was but a child.

  "What exactly did she do to kill Caius?" Liz spoke up, breaking into their thoughts.

  "It was strange," Sam frowned, trying to remember. "It was like she generated some kind of fire that burnt the life from him."

  "Is it some kind of witches power?" Alex asked.

  "No," said Gabby. "It's not anything that I can do."

  "In my dream, the Romans called her Celestine," Zac said, a far away look on his face. He sensed Gabby's sudden uneasiness and frowned, remembering the other day at Max's. Arturius had implied she had known more than she was letting on and being content with his melancholy he'd let it drop and promptly forgotten. When his eyes now flickered to the witch, her face flushed red and she looked away. Suddenly angry, he snarled, "What do you know Gabby?"

  Gabby cowered, seemingly unable to speak.

  "What does Arturius want with you?" Zac seethed, determined to get it out of her.

  "Lay off, Zac," Sam grabbed the back of his shirt, pulling him back slightly.

  "No, she knows what he's after. It's written all over her face." He wrenched himself free from his brother’s grip.

  "I can't tell you!" she cried,
as he grasped her arms. "Something terrible will happen!"

  "Gabby," he began, the warning plain in his voice.

  "I can't!" she shrieked.

  Zac backed off, glaring at her. "I think it's okay." He tapped his temple and rolled his eyes. "If the dreams are mostly true, then I've seen just about everything. It just hasn't been spelt out phonetically for my puny little mind."

  "He's right, Gabby," Sam said gently. "He's told me and nothing has happened. If something was going to, it already would have. Right?"

  She looked from Sam to Zac, hesitant about what exactly she should say. As long as she didn't spell out what Aya had done in the other place, in the void, perhaps it was enough. Zac knew most of it, even if he believed they were false dreams. Taking a deep breath, she said quietly, "He wants to know the secrets of power."

  "And Aya knew something about it," Zac sighed, remembering the dream where Arturius was trying to get the same information from Aya. "And they think you do too."

  "I don't know anything," she sobbed. "I don't understand any of it, so how could I?"

  "It's okay," Alex placed an arm around her shoulders to comfort her.

  "He approached me the other day," she began.

  "Gabby..." Zac began, his voice low.

  "He didn't do anything. He tried to suck me in with empty promises. Nothing he could offer will turn me," she said after taking a deep breath.

  Alex held her close. "Regardless of what he wants, he won't get it here. We need to get rid of him. For what he did to Aya."

  "We need to find a weakness," Liz said, biting her nails. "Should we talk to him and see what we could trick out of him?"

  Sam seemed pleased at Liz's sudden intuition. "Could be worth a shot. At the least it could buy us some time."

  "Then I will go," Zac declared. When Sam went to disagree he cut him off. "Arturius is arrogant. When you piss off arrogant people, they tend to let information go they otherwise wouldn't. And you'd have to agree I have a talent for pissing people off." Their silence was all the permission he needed.

  "There's always a loophole," Gabby said quietly, out of nowhere.

  "Gabby…" Alex began, giving Liz a wary look. They were meant to keep this to themselves, but Gabby had obviously changed her mind. Had she seen something change in the vampire's demeanor that they hadn't?

  "What do you mean?" Zac asked.

  "When casting a spell, there's always a way to undo it or at least counter," she shrugged. "If we could figure out what Katrin used to make the Romans, then we might find a way to undo it."

  "There could be another way to kill him for good?"

  "Perhaps. But it might be that Aya's ability was the loophole," she said. "I can try and see what I can find out. But I wouldn't get your hopes up."

  "Gabby's right," Sam agreed. "If we can get him to leave all together, that would be our best bet. We shouldn't count on there being another way."

  "Understood," Zac said, already wanting to go and search the Roman out.

  When he rose, Liz said, "Be careful, Zac."

  Grinning lopsidedly for the first time in weeks, he said, "Advice noted."

  Zac knew if he hung around Max's bar long enough, Arturius was bound to show his face sooner or later. But when Morgan sat beside him instead, he suddenly wanted her to go away.

  "I feel like I've hardly had time with you since I got here," she said gesturing to the bartender.

  "I'm sorry," Zac said. "It's not the greatest time."

  "No," she laughed as the bartender handed her her drink.

  "We've never really had a lot of time, have we?"

  "I guess we've always been needed elsewhere."

  "You're too nice, Morgan. We both know my minds been elsewhere. Then and now," he laid it out.

  She shook her head and sipped from her glass. It was a while before she spoke again and he wondered if he had annoyed her. "You're hiding something from me," she frowned, looking away. "I can tell."

  "Morgan," he rubbed his temples, grimacing. "I can't tell you everything."

  "Why not?"

  "They're not my secrets to tell."

  "Her secrets?"

  He sighed and drained his glass. He'd been trying to avoid it ever since she had found him by the cave. The day he left her in Calais in 1945, he knew that he'd overstepped a boundary by the way she shoved him onto that ship. She had begun to develop feelings for him and he'd handled it in a less than gentlemanly way. Hell, he'd just sailed away into the sunset never to see her again. After all she had done for him.

  Now, she sat next to him sixty eight years later and he suspected that time had done nothing to alter her perspective. He hoped to god that she hadn't held a flame for him all that time. He couldn't give her what she wanted. Aya was dead, but his heart would be forever hers.

  "Yes," he said after a moment. "Her secrets." Zac didn't have to look at her to know that his suspicions were true. "Morgan, you have to get out of here," he continued, trying to cover the sudden awkwardness between them. "I'm waiting for Arturius. If something happens, I can't protect you."

  "No," she shook her head. "I said I would help you."

  "Please," he took her hand.

  Morgan gazed at him, her expression conflicted. Abruptly, she dropped his hand and stood, downing the last of her drink. She was angry at him.

  "Morgan," he groaned, reaching for her.

  "I get it," she said quietly, stepping backwards before shrugging and walking from the bar, the door closing heavily behind her.

  Zac resumed his favorite position, glass in hand, the epitome of a boozehound. He would have to apologize to her later. He was a major asshole at the best of times, but she didn't deserve that. He'd make it up to her later. After he goaded Arturius on a bit.

  It wasn't long before the Roman sat next to him, taking the bait. He wouldn't find the same down and out vampire he had the last time.

  "What are you still doing here, Arthur," Zac sneered, using the name he'd found in his father's book.

  "You know exactly why I'm still here," he said, obviously giving him a little credit.

  "Gabby?" he guessed.

  "Where is she, Zachary?" he snarled.

  He shrugged.

  "Don't play games with me," the founder spat. "Wherever you've hidden her, I will find her eventually. You're only stalling the inevitable."

  "Well, you can't have her," he snorted. "Off limits Artie."

  Arturius cocked his head, "There is no such thing as limits where I am concerned. I take what I want, when I want."

  "You're so full of yourself," Zac prodded him. "Don't you ever get tired of living? Ever just want to lie down and die?"

  The Roman was arrogant, but didn't fire up. Instead, he hit where it hurt. "Happen you know a little English rose by the name of Victoria?"

  Zac stiffened at the mention of her name. His maker had never elaborated the reasons she had for claiming the South for vampires. The only thing he had ever overheard was the fact that she was trying to gain favor with someone. Who that was, he never knew.

  Arturius smirked at his reaction, "Thought so."

  Then he realized, she was trying to win favor with the founders by using him.

  "Victoria was my brother's pet," Arturius continued almost resentfully. "Regulus always has these grand schemes. Shame none of them have worked when they mattered the most."

  Zac shook his head, "Why are you telling me this?"

  "We heard about you, before her head was torn off," Arturius looked at him with disdain. "Honestly, I don't know what she saw in you. Perhaps I'm biased by the ages where men fought with swords and bare hands and didn't hide behind their automatic weapons. As a man, I fought the savages of the frontier lands with naught but a flimsy blade. Do you know how I got this?" He traced the scar that ran down his face, forehead to jaw over his left eye. "A Briton tried to hack my skull open with an axe," he sneered. "And you know what happened to him? I ripped his heart out with my bare human hands." He laughed, si
tting back onto the barstool. "Very effective, wouldn't you agree?"

  "If I live to be two thousand, do you suppose I will be as mental as you?" Zac sneered at the founder.

  Arturius laughed, "Zachary, if you hadn't of jumped the fence, I might have liked you. You could have been great. Such a shame."

  "I would never have fought for you," he spat. "Never. I'd rather watch you die. Speaking of dying... How about it?"

  "Try all you like, Zac. The only thing that can kill me is dead," Arturius said smugly, thumping him on the shoulder.

  Zac didn't believe him one bit. From what Gabby had said, there was always a way to undo a spell. Aya had obviously been turned after the founders and she could kill them. That meant there was a loophole, another way. How had she done it? They just had to find how and perhaps they could replicate it.

  That's it. How hadn't he thought of it before? Perhaps Gabby could replicate it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Aya's eyes snapped open. So, she had died again. This was her rebirth.

  The secret she had kept for two thousand years. She was the one true immortal. Last of her kind and yet the only one of her kind. In all that time no one had tasted her blood and lived to remember it... until Zac lay dying in that clearing.

  Aya's body began to awaken and she writhed in the pain that was returning along with her senses. Her heart was racing... her heart! It had been rent from her body. Clawing at her chest she found it intact, the muscles still knitting themselves together. Still raw, but her heart had grown back. She curled up into a ball as the searing heat of her muscles reaching out to each other overwhelmed all other senses. She was hardly aware that she was screaming as her insides began fusing together, the blood flowing more freely in her newly grown veins. Tears streamed down her face as she gave herself to the onslaught of agony. This was the part she hated the most.

  When she finally came to, she found herself in the cave at the edge of the manor grounds. Who had put her here? Perhaps Sam and Zac had made this her tomb. Zac... She tried to stand, but slipped and fell onto the rocky ground, cutting her hands and knees. Cursing, she crawled towards the cave entrance. She was weak, but without blood she wouldn't gain her former strength and the wound wouldn't heal completely. Using the cave wall, she managed to stand and began to make her way through the dark passageway.